Got the game for 5 bucks off Amazon earlier this week. Finally beat it today. Now that I've played the entire game I feel I can give a much fairer opinion on the title compared to the demo. Unfortunately it's not a particular great impression still. I'll say the game started out as a 5/10 game, totally average and boring with no outstanding features at all for the first 2-3 hours. As I played more, and the combat got more depth, and the story got a bit more interesting, it became maybe a 6.5/10 game. By the end of the game, the few highlights in the story and some good boss battles elevated the game to maybe a solid 7/10. I'll say some moments in the game feel like 7.5/10, but they're never consistent enough to really affect the overall impression of the game.
What I liked about the game:
+ Combat mechanics themselves are pretty sound. Good systems in terms of how they balance the stats for different forms of damage dealing, and ability use. It means that different equipment are sometimes more or less useful depending on what sort of combat character you're using instead of just specific stats affecting all damage.
+ The tech is rock solid. Good framerate, seamless world, fast initial loading, no loading during gameplay, textures look sharp, environmental modeling is pretty good. Some areas look great.
+ There's some attempt to make a straight action rpg a little bit more interesting with non-combat quests later on, especially in Stonebridge. There are a few moments of Obsidian's forte there, which their fans have come to expect.
+ The ending was really detailed and did a good job of summarizing the state of the world and the consequences of the player's choices throughout the game. Again, this is something that fans would expect from Obsidian, so it's nice to see that they did put in the effort at the very end at least.
What I didn't like about the game:
- The overall story is boring. The characters are generic. The world is generic. Everything feels like the first chapter of Neverwinter Nights 2, without ever getting to a point where the adventure actually gets interesting and elevates itself above the random fantasy RPG plot.
- The combat feedback is pretty iffy, especially in melee. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed playing the game at all with a melee character, so it's a good thing I went with the gun character. At least range attacks kinda feel like there is decent feedback, at least when enemies get knocked back by my power shots, and seeing them fly into the air when I kill them. It would be totally boring to see melee attacks just slide and float through enemies as you attack, especially bosses. They need better animations.
- Too much useless loot/too much boring loot/too much "loot". The game desperately suffers from Mass Effect 1 syndrome, where you have a limited inventory, and you pick up garbage everywhere you go. With 4 different characters but only 2 on an active party, there is a good chance that most players will stick with 2 characters, which means there are 2 entire equipment sets which go unused. Even within the characters you use, there will probably be a very limited amount of gear which will be useful based on your character build. That means you pick up so much garbage that in no time you will find yourself having to go back into the investory and convert to omnigel transmute shit just so you can pick up more stuff which you won't want to use either. Lol.
- Garbage online multiplayer mode. I don't even thing I need to expand on this. It is total garbage. Every single part of it. Camera, story logic, how character saves are handled, etc. Everything. This game is unplayable in online multiplayer with 3-4 players. It is clearly meant for local co-op, and they shoehorned an online mode into it, adding 4 player capacity, without changing anything about the game. Shameful.
Overall, I'll say that the biggest problem with the game, and what led it to poor reviews and poor sales, is that Square Enix and Obsidian were trying to sell what is essentially imo a 39.99 sort of game for full price. This is a 10 hour long action RPG with a boring set of characters in a boring world based on a boring franchise which is pretty much dead, and it has shitty online multiplayer. There's really nothing going for this game in a crowded market filled with far better alternatives.